Shannon's book sparkles with precise and concise readings of a variety of Renaissance texts that deal with the institutions of kingship and friendship and the surprising intersections of the two. It poses serious questions about sexuality, governance, and interpersonal relationships in Renaissance England, provides serious and compelling answers, yet does so without alienating the reader with technical, literary jargon. All readers will become friends with Shannon's book quickly.

Very original and engaging. You can tell Shurgot is very enthusiastic about his work. Will give me a new slant when I re-teach these plays.

Having seen the PBS program on the Marlowe-Shakespeare controversy as the context, I must say that I am now even more impressed by this pioneering book.

Given the importance of this book, I find myself puzzled by thefact that I am the first to review it..., but am delighted tohave the opportunity. This book was a real milestone when itappeared. In a very factual, unbiassed but totally proficient andpersuasive way it demonstrated in great detail that the persona of thepoems is presented, through them..... Sonnet 20 is of course a crucial targetfor Pequigney, and he reads it superbly, but he is hardly less good ona great many other of Shakespeare's wonderful poems, and is by nomeans narrow or obsessive about his point of view: on the contrary, hehas an excellent notion of how his argument fits into a wider schemeof things. Those who read the poems in Katherine Jones's disappointingArden 3 edition will realise, if they examine Pequigney's work, thatthat editor's claims about the supposed novelty of her views on thebisexuality presented within the poems is greatly exaggerated, andthat Pequigney makes many of the important points both earlier andbetter. Anyone seriously interested in the Sonnets will want to readthis book, which I would rank as one of the most significant and bestworks concerned with those poems: more essential to read than, forexample, John Kerrigan's edition, competent though that is, and insome ways more to the point than Stephen Booth's excellenttome. Someone reading both Pequigney and Helen Vendler would perhapsbenefit more from those two books than any others, though I wouldrecommend using Ingram and Redpath's edition of the Sonnets alongsidethese critical works....

My 7-year-old *asks* for this book as bedtime reading. Filled with wonderful, stylized illustrations of spirits, beasts, and renaissance costume, the book is a visual feast. While the text will surely frustrate many a Shakespeare aficionado, it is engaging and accessible to young children. Only two plots are well-developed: the love story between Miranda and Ferdinand, which gets the bulk of the attention, and the punishment and forgiveness of Antonio and the King. But this is just right: these core plots are told in a way that easily holds a child's attention, introduces snippets of lovely Shakespearian language, and prepares the child for a fuller encounter with the play.

This was a great helper for my english class. It helped so mcuh for studing and homework. In it you get not only the text, but summaries and translations from the old english to the modern english. It also includes insights into William Shakspears writting technique. It helped me so much i dont know what i'd do without it. I recommend this to anyone who is studing The Tempest, because it will be your bestfriend forever! Definatly choose this edition! It's FANTASTIC!

Hawkes' piece of literary metacriticism trumps the work of the critic by suggesting that adopting a singular view about a text is not only futile, but worthless. Dizzily dipping between Shakespearean texts and the American jazz tradition, Hawkes proposes new possibilities for criticism that may free us yet of our anxieties as critics. Or maybe it's just a delightful daydream.

Girar is a quite heterodox critic, and his trademark, mimetic desire (that is the fact that we desire something by imitating someone else who also desire it either directly (our best friend's girlfriend) or indirectly (social stereotypes that make desirable a certain type of woman or a specific product), provides a unique reading of the work of the bard. The book is based on the thesis that Shakespeare had conciousness of mimetic desire and that his plays show a representation of it as part of their plot. Girard focuses on many plays and on the sonnets and his reading is fascinating. Probably some will find his analysis repetitiva and determinist. However, the fact that mimetic desire is quite unlike any other theory applied to the bard creates very interesting readings of character development and plot in the plays, as well as one of the most convincing theories on the sonnets I have ever read. When combined with Bloom's Shakespeare and Greenblatt's Shakespearean Negotiations, the reading of Shakespeare becomes an excellent exercise of literary pleasure and a stimulating intellectual experience.

This survey of the major themes in Shakespeare's plays is meant not for a literary audience so much as for a theater audience of playgoers who seek to enjoy these performances. As such, chapters chronicle Shakespeare's most pervasive themes and how these patterns hold changing meaning to past and present viewers.